Collagen is a protein that forms many structures in the body including tendons, bones, teeth and sheets that support skin and internal organs. Collagen is composed of three chains, wound in a triple helix. The structure comes from repeats of three amino acids. In the helices, every third amino acid is glycine, and many of the remaining amino acids are proline or hydroxyproline.
Collagen has been used commercially and clinically for some time. Currently, collagen can be used to replace or augment hard or soft connective tissue, such as skin, tendons, cartilage, bone and interstitium. Solid collagen has been implanted surgically, and injectable collagen formulations are now available for more convenient administration. Currently, several injectable collagen compositions are available commercially including ZYDERM®, ZYPLAST®, COSMODERM® and COSMOPLAST®.
Each collagen composition has particular physical properties that can be advantageous or disadvantageous to its use in particular techniques. There thus remains a need in the art for collagen compositions with further physical properties to expand the selection of compositions available to practitioners of skill in the art.